Being accepted for admission into Harvard University takes excellent grades, top test scores, strong extra-curricular activities, and recommendations by influential people. Having that admission rescinded takes irresponsible Tweets by a 16-year-old.

That’s the case for Kyle Kashuv, a survivor of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida. After being accepted to Harvard with plans on attending this fall, the person labeled by some on the left as the “Parkland provocateur” received a letter from the university rescinding his invitation to attend.

2/ A few weeks ago, I was made aware of egregious and callous comments classmates and I made privately years ago – when I was 16 years old, months before the shooting – in an attempt to be as extreme and shocking as possible.

I immediately apologized.

Here is my apology: pic.twitter.com/eI38ziiQE8

— Kyle Kashuv (@KyleKashuv) June 17, 2019

4/ After the story broke, former peers & political opponents began contacting Harvard urging them to rescind me. Harvard then sent this letter stating that Harvard "reserves the right to withdraw an offer of admission" and requested a written explanation within 72 hours. pic.twitter.com/RfEQCvjgDX

— Kyle Kashuv (@KyleKashuv) June 17, 2019

6/ I also sent an email to the Office of Diversity and Inclusion to seek guidance on how to right this wrong and work with them once I was on campus. pic.twitter.com/3M1UEXXeQm

— Kyle Kashuv (@KyleKashuv) June 17, 2019

8/ Somewhat ironically, the Office of Diversity and Inclusion sent me this response regarding my apology:

“Thank you for your email. We appreciate your thoughtful reflections and look forward to connecting with you upon your matriculation in the fall of 2020…" pic.twitter.com/YUX67QW3KE

— Kyle Kashuv (@KyleKashuv) June 17, 2019

10/ Harvard deciding that someone can’t grow, especially after a life-altering event like the shooting, is deeply concerning. If any institution should understand growth, it’s Harvard, which is looked to as the pinnacle of higher education despite its checkered past.

— Kyle Kashuv (@KyleKashuv) June 17, 2019

12/ I believe that institutions and people can grow. I've said that repeatedly.

In the end, this isn’t about me, it's about whether we live in a society in which forgiveness is possible or mistakes brand you as irredeemable, as Harvard has decided for me.

— Kyle Kashuv (@KyleKashuv) June 17, 2019

Did 16-year-old Kashuv make mistakes by being cultural insensitive, even outright racist? Yes. But as he pointed out in his Twitter thread, the posts he made were the mistakes of someone before experiencing the massacre of his classmates. Things are different, now. He’s different. Everyone at his school is different.

The message Harvard is sending is a belief that someone qualified to go to their school who receives public backlash for stupid actions when they were younger are irredeemable. What Kashuv did is likely no different or even less severe than many who are or will be attending Harvard. But the others weren’t at the scene of the infamous shooting. They weren’t brought into the spotlight where their pasts were scrutinized. Perhaps most importantly, they probably aren’t the type of common sense gun rights activists Kashuv is.

That last point, which rubbed so many progressives wrong since the shooting, is likely a contributing factor in Harvard’s decision.

In a follow up Tweet, Kashuv posted this:

So what now? I’m figuring it out. I had given up huge scholarships in order to go to Harvard, and the deadline for accepting other college offers has ended. I’m exploring all options at the moment.

For complete transparency, I’m not fan of Harvard’s. Perhaps it’s because I’m Asian; Harvard doesn’t like Asians.

It would be different if they never accepted him in the first place, but accepting him and then rescinding is poor form. He made mistakes. He has apologized. He has grown. Harvard should let him in.

We are currently forming the American Conservative Movement. If you are interested in learning more, we will be sending out information in a few weeks.

Announcing the second annual celebration of the 2nd amendment and the gear that protects our lives and our liberty.

Gun Pride Month is the annual celebration of the life-saving tools of freedom. It’s that time of year when those of the pro-liberty right, liberals, conservatives and Libertarians, come out to show their pride in the kit that protects our lives and liberty. It is the second year of a celebration that is growing by leaps and bounds.

Never Forget, even for an instant, that the one and only reason anybody has for taking your gun away is to make you weaker than he is, so he can do something to you that you wouldn’t allow him to do if you were equipped to prevent it. This goes for burglars, muggers, and rapists, and even more so for policemen, bureaucrats, and politicians. – L. Neil Smith

Standing for the common sense human right of self-defense

Leftists love the divide and conquer approach in attacking liberty. What began with the ‘first they came for the gun owners’ morphed into other targets of the national socialist left. This is why we the patriots of the pro-liberty right must band together and refuse to be silenced by the mobocracy of the left.

Other groups of people have claimed whole months, so why shouldn’t the over 120 million innocent gun owners do the same? This is to show the liberty grabber left that we will not be shamed into silence on social media. We are the armed patriots of America and we aren’t going anywhere, so the nation’s socialist-left had better get used to that fact.

As Tom Knighton of Bearing Arms stated it in his article on the celebration: Make July ‘Gun Pride’ Month!

Gun control activists are lashing out, trying to create a world where gun ownership is socially taboo. They want us silent because if people know we exist, they might be interested in our thoughts on gun control. They might seek us out and get facts about guns and how they’re used for self-defense 2.5 million times per year, a number supported by CDC research.

…

Not only that, but we get to spend the month of Independence Day celebrating the ultimate proof that we are truly independent. Let’s start showing our support for gun rights by using the hashtag #GunPrideMonth on pictures of us using our firearms responsibly posted to social media. Let’s start printing t-shirts and posters. Let’s come up with new ideas to remind people that we’re gun owners and we’re Americans, for crying out loud!

Guns are the linchpin of liberty

Guns are the only physical manifestation of the Bill of Rights. Without the government-restraining right of firearm ownership, the Constitution is only a piece of paper to be ignored by those who lust for power. Authoritarian socialist regimes of the past and present have also had Constitutions or other foundational documents that purported to protect human and civil rights. But, without the basic human right of self-defense, those rights were meaningless.

It’s no coincidence that the liberty grabber left’s first attempts at censorship began with the subject of the self-defense. What began with the banning of a few 2nd amendment, pro-liberty channels and pages has expanded to other voices. As has always been the case, the left and its socialist national agenda of societal slavery has always been inferior to the agenda of economic liberty and freedom of the conservative right.

The left has a fever, and the only prescription is more gun confiscation

Guns put the teeth in the Bill of Rights, a restraint the power-hungry can’t ignore. This is why we have created this celebration and why it is catching fire among the patriot community. The plain fact is the liberty grabber left cannot abide the ability of the people to ‘resist’ a governmental monopoly on the use of force. As is the case in other realms, they cannot be honest as to why they want certain people to be disarmed. Hence, they have to couch their obsession with stepping-stones to gun confiscation ‘Intergalactic Background Checks’ etc. in terms of ‘safety’ or reform.

We’ve already documented and detailed what is just a sampling of the instances where the national socialist left has demanded gun confiscation. It used to be that the left would only make these strident demands against liberty in the context of a mass murder tragedy, but now they have lowered to bar to calling for this from the mere rumor of the report of something happening of this nature.

The Takeaway

It is patently absurd to collectively punish millions people for the crimes of a few. Is it fair to treat certain people as second class citizens simply because they have certain items of hardware? That is the flawed injustice of the left in going after the basic human rights of innocent gun owners.

It is time for the 120+ million innocent gun owners to stand up and be counted. The liberty grabber left has made it clear they want to punish millions with a never ending stream of new regulations and requirements that will do nothing except punish the innocent, followed by outright gun confiscation. It is time to show our pride in defending liberty and saving lives in the process.

We are currently forming the American Conservative Movement. If you are interested in learning more, we will be sending out information in a few weeks.

As an American citizen, you have the right to take a knee at sporting events. You have the right to profess adherence to a religion whose leaders want to destroy the United States. You have the right to burn the American flag. Conversely, I have the right to speak out against your actions and to try to convince you to make better choices.

As Allie Beth Stuckey pointed out on Twitter, it sounds awfully patriotic to ban the burning of the American flag. Anyone who disrespects the flag disrespects America, and doing so should not be allowed without consequences. But if we put aside the surface-level anger towards idiots who reveal their idiocy with such actions, we’ll see that the very thing that makes America great is the freedoms we have that the government, through the Constitution, is unable to take from us.

One such freedom is the right to burn the American flag.

Some of you seem to be confusing whether or not something *should* be done with whether or not it should be illegal. Burning the flag is an atrocious act, but our freedom to do so as a form of expression shows just how radical our defense of liberty is in America.

— Allie Beth Stuckey (@conservmillen) June 16, 2019

The motivations behind every new campaign to ban flag-burning are almost always sincere and patriotic. However, there are inherent risks that come with forcing our patriotic nature on those who take advantage of our freedoms as a platform to spit on them. Keep in mind, they aren’t burning flags in hopes that they’ll always be allowed to do so. They burn flags so patriotic politicians make the mistake of taking away rights of individual Americans. If flag-burning or any other free expression of thought is taken away by law or amendment, others will follow. It’s a can of worms we never want to open.

Those who burn our flag do not care about actually burning it. Doing so doesn’t benefit them. It’s done to enrage patriots, and it works on a regular basis. This is why they keep doing it. And if Washington DC responds by banning it, they will win. That is their ultimate goal – the removal of individual rights as a result of their heinous actions.

We can and should oppose people who disrespect the very nation that allows them to freely disrespect it. But our opposition must not manifest in a way that cuts off our nose to spite our own faces. The freedom to burn the flag is not a a right that exists in a vacuum. If we start suppressing one component of free expression for the sake of appeasing our outrage, we are opening the door for leaders in the future to suppress other components of free expression that patriots would never want suppressed. That’s the nature of suppression.

There would be nothing more appealing to flag-burning, America-hating idiots than for our freedoms to be taken away as a result of their actions. They want flag-burning to be banned. It would help their communist cause.

We are currently forming the American Conservative Movement. If you are interested in learning more, we will be sending out information in a few weeks.